A RED COVERING UNDERCOVER GIRL

UNDERCOVER GIRL: The Lesbian Informant Who Helped the FBI

Bring Down the Communist Party (Watertown, MA: Imagine Books, 2017)

By LISA E. DAVIS

Rev. by Hugh Murray

This is a case in which the author clearly dislikes the chief protagonist of her book, and this reviewer dislikes the author. Lisa E. Davis is a politically correct academic and a lesbian, who asserts that one high point of her life was “meeting Fidel Castro.”(Inside back page) By contrast, Angela Calomiris, a small woman with butch features, lived in Manhattan's bohemian Greenwich Village, beginning in the 1930s, she joined the Photo League and then the Communist Party in the early 1940s, and from 1942-1949, was an informant on the League and the CP for the FBI. In 1949 she blew her cover when she openly testified in court against the leaders of the American CP, who were charged under the Smith Act for advocating the violent overthrow of the American government.

Davis relates that those who disliked Calomiris described her as “ruthless,” “conniving,” as a woman who turned in a lesbian to the police or FBI.(p. 2) A few pages later Davis describes Angela as “fair-minded, cold-blooded, charming, and a phony – always intelligent, who knew how to deceive and please and hang tough. A complex, probably troubled person.”(8) At the trial, Angela was labeled “fink,” “stool pigeon,” and “rat.”(12) Author Davis condemns Angela thusly: “But she chose badly, and ended up on the wrong side of history.”(12) Because Angela exposed the Communist efforts to sabotage and overthrow the US Government?! Davis should ask herself, where is the USSR today? I contend Angela Calomiris chose the right side of history, unlike Lisa Davis and Fidel Castro.

Academic Davis basically rejects the findings of the Venona files – that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent, and whether Whittaker Chambers once had a gay crush on Hiss is unimportant compared to the fact that Chambers helped expose the Communist spy rings inside the US Govt.(10-11) Davis also writes sympathetically of the atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who most Americans at that time believed were rightly executed. Davis grasps at left-wing straws implying the judgment against the couple was wrong. Although for decades he maintained his innocence, Davis ignores the belated confession of Rosenberg co-defendant Morton Sobell (NYT, 21 Sept. 2008) Davis ignores the speech of Vladimir Putin of early 2012 in which the Russian leader thanked the Western scientists who had helped advance the development of the Soviet A-bomb with suitcases filled with secret information.(Reuters stories, Jan. and Feb. 2012) Davis condemns Roy Cohn for being in the closet, and certainly fails to commend him for his part in the prosecution of the Rosenberg spies. Davis even includes play write Tony Kushner's imaginary confrontation of the Rosenbergs to announce the imminent death of the AIDS infected, closeted, anti-Communist Cohn.(10) Davis does not include the the verdict of Judge Irving Kaufman that the treason by the Rosenbergs led to the Korean War, which would cost 35,000 American lives. We know today that Stalin gave Kim Il Sung the green light to invade South Korea in 1950. Would Stalin have allowed that war if his government had not already exploded an A-bomb in 1949? And Stalin had the bomb in 1949 rather than 1959 because of the suitcases of scientific files provided by Western scientists and others in the Soviet spy networks. Indeed, we might thank the Rosenbergs and their comrades for the Kim Il Sung dynasty that still rules North Korea today.

Davis views it differently. “The McCarthy era spawned great controversy – the special bitterness toward informants.”(13) That bitterness was evident for Communists and fellow travelers, but clearly not for most Americans, as demonstrated by Davis' own book. After testifying to expose the dangers of communism, Angela was interviewed on major radio programs, like that of Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary Margaret McBride; interviewed and discussed in major newspapers and mentioned on national broadcasts of Walter Winchell. In the early 1950s Angela, with the help of a ghost writer, Caroline Bird, produced Red Masquerade, the story of her membership in the Party and various front groups, like the Photo League. The book was published by Lippincott, a major company, and was widely, favorably reviewed. It was of a genre of the times, like Herbert Philbrick's I Led 3 Lives, which became a television series (and a favorite of the young Lee Oswald). Matt Cvetic's I Was a Communist for the FBI was transformed from book to the screen, and nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary of 1951. Angela hoped her book would become a film, too. But it did not. Angela's story was somewhat unique, in that hers was the story of a woman, whereas most of the other informer stories were of men. Of course, during her time in the spotlight, Angela sought to keep her sapphic tastes secret.

Davis is right to stress that in testifying against the CP, Angela risked being exposed as a lesbian. The conservative and mainstream media did what they could to portray her as an all-American girl doing dangerous work for patriotic reasons. But even during the trial, the CP defense team tried to insert the issue in order to discredit the witness. Directing questions to the 33-year-old witness like, are you married, do you have children, and stressing the Miss Calomiris, were meant to raise the queer issue in the juror's minds. Judge Harold R. Medina sought to shield Angela, and upheld prosecution objections to cut off certain lines of questioning. Angela was on the witness stand for 5 days, so the Party attorneys had ample opportunity to try to pierce the shield, but Judge Medina protected the witness and would later speak of the sacrifice she had made in coming forth (and not coming out).

Like witness Herbert Philbrick, Angela perjured herself when she denied that she had been paid for her years of service by the FBI,(55) and in interviews after “her” book was published, she lied by denying it was ghosted – she asserted she merely had some help in writing. Author Davis even exposes that, horror of horrors, when looking for employment, Angela “padded” her resume.(167) Yet, after the trial, after the interviews and the publication of the book, Angela moved on, developed her business skills and died with a small real estate empire in Province town valued at $900,000. Quite a climb for a girl whose dad died when she was 7, and whose mom then sent her to an orphanage. Despite the hostility of Davis toward her subject one must commend Davis for restoring to the public the life of Angel Calomiris, and including the closeted side not revealed in the 1950s. Now Angela can be understood, not only as an anti-communist, but as a lesbian too.

Davis' political views intrude throughout her book. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted saying she disliked Communists because they lie; to which Davis retorts: “Anti-Communist might tell bigger lies.”(48) Davis then exposes Angela's lies about not receiving payment from the FBI for her years of information. Davis does write that J. Edgar Hoover was furious about this lie, because it placed his organization in a bad light, unwilling to help those who were helping his security organization. Davis then makes a generalization that what set communist lesbians apart was “these women had a social conscience.”(61) Other lesbians apparantly lacked that conscience, and Angela's anti-communist stance, probably made her anti-conscience in Davis' measurement. Davis extended her assessment when she wrote that the Communist Party was “the conscience of the American Left for at least two decades.”(64) So one is not surprised when, describing the simultaneous trials in 1949, of the Communist leaders at which Angela testified, the Alger Hiss trial for perjury (re spying), and the Judith Copland trial (treason), Davis calls them all “heresy” trials.(76)

When the prosecution and the Anti-Communists praised Angela's great courage in testifying against the CP leadership, Davis tries to avoid this compliment. Davis notes that Angela did receive a mailed death threat upon conviction of the Party leaders, that for a time she had 24-hour police protection, and at one point was beaten as she emerged from a subway exit. Angela thought the assailant was a member of the International Workers' Order. Angela had named names, including members of the IWO. Davis diminishes this, asserting that Angela's testimony was anti-labor. Davis refers to labor reporter Victor Riesel as “the notorious columnist for Hearst's ...[newspapers] and a militant anti-communist.”(149-50) She neglects to mention that Riesel had been blinded by goons working for corrupt unions. And a young, leading-man in California, when he opposed the communists in a Hollywood union, was threatened that someone would throw acid in his face so destroy his image and career if he did not yield to the radicals. Ronald Reagan did not yield then or later.

Davis does connect some of the attacks upon Hollywood star Judy Holiday to Angela's expose of Holiday's police woman girl friend, who was also a member of the CP. Thus, Davis disagrees with Arthur Laurents' assertion that the gay issue did not surface in Hollywood's anti-Communist purge.(156) But the police woman named by Angela was exposed as a Communist, not as a lesbian.

A few things Davis could have mentioned but did not are still interesting. She writes that the CPUSA had taken up the challenge of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay to raise the cause of the most exploited and oppressed section of the world's working class. McKay was a West Indian author, whose “If We Must Die” inspired many. He attended the 4^th Congress of the Communist International in Petrograd in 1922. With Stalin's urging, the CPUSA did make Black civil rights a major item in its agenda by 1930. But McKay would become disillusioned with the Communist movement, and in 1944 would be baptized as a convert to Roman Catholicism.

Davis mentions Commonwealth College in Arkansas, which like Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, was meant to be a left-wing institution in the South. Indeed, it was at Highlander that Rosa Parks learned the tactics that she would apply when she refused to yield her seat in 1955 on a Montgomery bus, which led to the bus boycott and the reinvigoration of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King also attended Highlander for training and tactics. Though most of the teachers and participants of these institutions were on the Left or would become so, one alum of Commonwealth went on to become the governor of Arkansas. However, Democratic Gov. Orville Faubus is best known not for his left-wing past, but for his efforts to prevent the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, which provoked Republican Pres. Eisenhower to send troops to guarantee the entrance to the schools of the 9 Blacks. That was the first time federal troops had been used to defend Black rights since Reconstruction.

Davis' book lacks an index, making it harder to follow chronologically some aspects of her story, particularly about Judy Holiday. Davis sprinkles her concluding chapters with put-downs of Angela (161, 168, 175, 177, 181) Davis quotes Angela on a point that all should ponder: Angela “accounted for her lack of remorse at betraying people she had worked closely with...'The Party doesn't believe in friendship,' she told them. 'There aren't any friends there.'”(163)

There is another reason why I dislike the author's approach in this book. I recall Elia Kazan, who produced some wonderful films of my youth, like “On the Waterfront” with Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, and Marlon Brando, and “Streetcar Named Desire,” and “East of Eden.” In 1952 before the House Un-American Activities Committees Kazan had named names of former comrades. Decades later, the Hollywood Left demonstrated its hatred of Kazan, the fink. When in 1999 the Academy Award was to present the elderly Kazan with a special award for life-time achievement, left wingers in the audience, like Ed Harris and Nick Nolte, sat in their seats and refused to applaud or stood and turned their backs on the whistle blower who exposed Communists in the industry. To the Left, Kazan was an informer. To most Americans, he was a hero. And Angela was a heroine.

I wonder if Ms. Davis has ever personally faced the issue. I recall after my arrest in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans in September 1960, I was interviewed by the police Red Squad. Seven of us had been arrested, but I think only the two whites were so interviewed. I refused to say how many members were in the NO CORE chapter. Or how many attended meetings, etc. I admitted that I had read The Communist Manifesto, and said I favored income tax.

In 1962 I was called up for the draft. Many of us in a room, and we were handed forms to fill out. Most filled them easily and quickly. I had to take longer. One was a question about arrests. I had been convicted in the 1960 sit-in, a felony, that was still being appealed through the courts. I filled that in. The other problem question concerned subversive organizations: the KKK, the CP, and many front groups. Perusing the list, I suddenly recognized a name – the Jewish Culture Clubs. I realized that during the CORE training institute in Miami in August 1960, we had some connection with the Jewish group. Once, when we were to integrate a beach, they booked the picnic table next to ours, as a buffer, to avoid trouble with possible militant racists. Also we had had a dance at their meeting hall. The first was a public beach, so I did not worry about that, but the dance was at their hall. Should I mark it down? If I lie, the fine mentioned on the form was about $2000, an enormous amount at the time. It was only a dance, - indeed, that is where I first learned the twist, a new dance of that era. Then, I also realized photographs were taken. So I decided to mention this and put it on the form. When I handed it to the officer, he looked, and asked in surprise, “But you're not even Jewish?” He told me I would have to talk to the FBI regarding my felony, but their representative was presently speaking with the Black Muslim who opposed induction. I sat and waited. The FBI man said they could not draft someone with a felony conviction, but he would speak to the DA about dropping the charge. Bottom line, in several weeks I got the answer – the new NO DA, Jim Garrison would not drop the charges, and the case was being appealed up to the US Supreme Court. I was not inducted.

In early 1963 I was teaching 5^th grade at a private school in NO, and after classes, played tennis with a colleague. Thus, I arrived home later than usual. My mother greeted me, “Humph! I thought they had rounded you up.” I rushed to the TV to find what she was referring to. The Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee was engaged in an anti-red raid, and arrested 3 “subversives.” James Dombrowski, head of the Southern Conference Education Fund, an integration organization (I was on its mailing list), Ben Smith and Bruce Walzer, two attorneys who defended unions, integration, and other “subversive” types, were the 3 rounded up. Jack, a friend from Tulane and a junior member of the Smith firm, was also wondering if the ax would fall on him. I spoke with him and mentioned that I had known a member of the CP going back to CORE and 1960. If called to testify, what should I do? Happily, I was never called before LUAC.

Nearly 2 months after the round-up, I was teaching 5^th grade when Mrs. Flagg, who taught another 5^th grade class directly across the hall from mine, came to my door. She asked me to come to her classroom for a few minutes. I rarely left my class unattended, but assumed there was an unusual problem. It was a new school, and we had no cafeteria. Mrs. Flagg's class was then having lunch and free time, so it was quite noisy in her room. One of her pupils had brought to school one of the new transistor radios, and she wanted me to listen. We craned out necks over the boy and his radio. I listened a short time, but had to return to my class.

I re-entered and shut the door. I announced that Pres. Kennedy has just been shot in Dallas. Immediately, the pupils cheered and applauded. One girl was the exception; she put her head on her table and cried. I was shocked by their reaction, and gave an impromptu history lesson. “You think this is the end of integration. At the end of the Civil War some thought, if we can only kill Lincoln, the North will yield, and the South will be allowed to secede successfully. They did kill Lincoln, and the result was the North grew angrier, harsher, and the consequence was Radical Reconstruction. Killing Kennedy will probably make the North even more determined to impose integration. I, like my pupils, assumed Kennedy had been shot by a segregationist.

The school canceled later classes and let us all out early. That afternoon, I received a phone call from Shelly Zervigon, wife of Carlos, one of the early CORE activists. She told me she had heard on the news that Kennedy had been murdered by a Lee Oswald, a communist from New Orleans! I was stunned. Who was he? Many thought I was a communist from NO. And in October the round up had already begun. In November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris, and shortly after, Kristallnacht, the round up of thousands of Jews and burning of many synagogues in Germany. If that happened because of the assassination of an embassy official, what will happen with the assassination of a President? I began to think, this is it. I am going to go out and drink (it may be my last chance), and try to find out info on this Oswald. I drove to the French Quarter and drank and asked. No one seemed to have heard of LHO. Finally, I did hear about one person who may have spoken to him. I was told Bob Heller, a Tulanian and former CORE activist, may have spoken with Oswald when Oswald was distributing pro-Castro literature in down-town NO. At that time, that was the only name I knew that might have had a connection to LHO.

After school on Tuesday 26 November 1963 two FBI men came to visit me at home. In the summer of 1963 I had picked up a Fair Play leaflet in the Tulane U. library on a table, with no one around. On it was a PO Box address. I thought a fellow grad student had printed it, went to his desk, showed it to him, but he knew nothing about it. We discussed writing to the POB, but both of us were suspicious. I joked, it could be an FBI ploy. We decided to do nothing till we knew more. Now, the FBI was asking me about Oswald. At the time, I had no idea we had attended the same junior high, and possibly the same high school. I knew only one name of a person who someone thought had met Oswald. I told the FBI Heller's name. And if I had known 20 people who had encountered Oswald, I would have named all 20. Some years after, I became a critic of the Warren Commission's report and conclusions about the assassination. Had I withheld information, it would have been more difficult to be a critic. The FBI did then go to interview Heller. Later when I encountered a Northerner on Tulane campus, Phil Good always would point at me and yell “fink.”

In 2008 I was teaching at Hebei Normal U. in Shijiazhuang, China, when one night I received an email from my boss: be careful, there had been an incident at Disco City; try to come back early (or something like that). I assume the same email was sent to all the foreign faculty. I had never been to Disco City, but was curious. Phone calls here and there. With the help of a friendly Chinese woman who had a car, a Brazilian of Chinese extraction who knew English and Cantonese, but was studying Mandarin and was also a business man, and one of my students to help translate, we set out. I was told there were 3 victims, an American, an African, and an Asian. First stop, the hospital. We found the room where one of the foreigners was being held. The door was locked, and brown paper on the windows blocked all views, but the strong odor of medicine gave the impression that the injury was serious. I tried to use my foreign privilege, with my student translating to the nurse telling her I'm and American and want to see the American in the room. The nurse did not yield; she would not allow us to see the injured party.

From there we drove to the jail for illegal aliens. I was surprised that a young Bangladeshi, who had lived in the same building as I, and with whom I had chatted in English on occasion was in trouble. He had arrived on a visa to study Chinese, but overstayed his visa, got a job in another disco, and had a girl friend who happened to be one of my students. All this was news to me. In the jail he told me at Disco City the three foreigners were together and one had made a play for a pretty young Chinese gal, who happened to be the girlfriend of a local Mafioso. When the 3 exited the disco, they were met by 6 Chinese with knives. The East African had been badly wounded (it was he who was in the hospital room). The American had received only a slight cut on his hand, and he was more worried about being deported as China was expelling many non-essential foreigners in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Bangladeshi ran away and escaped injury. But as there were so few foreigners in Shijiazhuang, a city of about 2 million, authorities had no trouble apprehending him. We raised some money to help pay his fines, and his parents had to pay for his flight home.

Upon returning to my flat, I received a phone call from my boss. Where was I that afternoon? Who was I with? I had never before received such a call; indeed, I had been given great freedom in teaching my classes. But I refused to give names in this instance. I don't think there were any negative repercussions for me or my student; I was treated well. Overall, I probably had more freedom in teaching at that university in China then, than I would have had at most narrow-minded, politically correct universities in America.

I was working as a minor bureaucrat in the police building (I did not work for the police, however). I was shocked when young men would enter the building wearing t-shirts, “Off the Snitch.” Kill the informer! I assume they reside in the neighborhoods that are crime-ridden with high murder rates.

Bottom line – despite Davis' terms, “fink,” “stool pigeon,” “rat,” or the more positive ones I prefer, “whistle blower,” “informer,” “reporter,” I do not think there is a simple formula one can use concerning informing. Sometimes it is right; sometimes wrong. And unlike Davis, I think Angela Calomiris did the right thing in informing on the leadership of the CP, and more, I think she, and not they, were on the right side of history.      

RE: BETTINA APTHEKER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 INTIMATE POLITICS: HOW I GREW UP RED,

FOUGHT FOR FREE SPEECH, AND BECAME A FEMINIST REBEL

By BETTINA F. APTHEKER, (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006)

                                          Rev. by Hugh Murray 

                     This is a provocative and honest autobiography.  Reading it closely, however, one can observe how ideology still shapes Bettina’s view of reality, distorting it to fit her leftist and feminist structure.

            When her book was first published in 2006, the media focused on her assertion that her father, Herbert Aptheker, for decades described as “the leading theoretician of the Communist Party, USA,” had sexually abused his daughter, Bettina, from age 3 to age 13.  Toward the end of her book, Bettina discussed this “nightmare” of abuse with her female lover, Kate, who like Bettina is also a feminist.  Upon hearing of some of Herbert’s reactions to these charges, Kate suggested that Herbert might have been molested as a child himself.  Bettina then writes, “I knew that my father had had an older brother named Alvin.  He and my father had been very close and they shared a room together as boys.  Alvin had committed suicide” when he was 28 and Herbert 20.(p. 513)

            I have no knowledge of Alvin or why he committed suicide at age 28.  But neither does Bettina.  And because some victims of child abuse later abuse children themselves is no reason to presume that Alvin molested Herbert – which she insinuates.  I submit that Bettina smears and convicts Alvin because of her ideology, not because of any verifiable facts.  Ironically, her family was a fierce opponent of “McCarthyism,” yet here we see her practicing a version of it more damaging than any conducted by the Wisconsin Senator.

            This paragraph’s meanness belies the declared aims of her autobiography: “…, I made the decision that I would write about particular individuals only from my direct experience with them, so that I would not engage in rumor or hearsay.”(5)  By including this smear against her uncle, Bettina weakens her allegations against her father.

 I must admit, I came to this book as a skeptic.  I suspected from the coverage of her “recovered” memory of fatherly abuse that it was all a feminist fantasy.  My Master’s thesis, completed in 1963, explored the Scottsboro rape cases of the 1930s, in which two white women alleged they had been raped on a freight train by nine Blacks.  The Communists defended the young men, agitating here and abroad, and hiring top-notch attorneys who proved – to almost everyone except Alabama juries – that the boys were innocent.  I am male, and totally reject the view enunciated by Nina Totenberg on National Public Radio during the Clarence Thomas hearings that women do not make up stories.  I was furious about the smear campaign against Thomas, and against the young nephew of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was falsely accused by a woman in Florida after a night of partying.  I also had to endure the year-long hoax of charges invented by Tawana Brawley and supported by Rev. Al Sharpton & Co. and reported daily in the liberal media.  I questioned her veracity from the beginning, but the media dared not do so until much later.  And I was angry not only at the media, but the Duke University administrators who condemned the school’s lacrosse team as guilty the minute false charges were lodged.  All of these were examples of feminist injustice – smearing and destroying the reputations of men to reinforce the feminist ideology, and the feminist lie, - that women do not make up stories.

Though I am clearly opposed to the feminist approach, I do not go to the other extreme by maintaining that women always lie about charges of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape.  I consider each case individually, looking at the credibility of all those involved.  At present the media are quick to investigate the man’s background, searching for patterns or evidence of other indiscretions.  However, because of feminist inspired “rape-shield laws” the public is prevented from knowing the name and background of the woman, or even whether she has had a pattern of making false charges.  These feminist laws are unjust and should be repealed.

            As for Bettina’s father, Herbert, I also knew him personally, having met him at two lectures he presented in the summer of 1962, and  I worked for him on his W. E. B. Du Bois projects and at the American Institute for Marxist Studies from 1971 to 1975.  I was Aptheker’s employee and while relations with my boss were generally cordial, we were not close.  I was invited to his home on only one occasion, a small gathering that included (if I recall correctly) Herbert’s wife, Fay, another Du Bois researcher, Bettina, her husband Jack, and her child Josh.

            I was shocked by Bettina’s charge of molestation.  We have only her account of this; not his.  None of us was there to substantiate her charge.  The evidence supporting Bettina’s claim is circumstantial, so what follows is speculation.

            In the 1980s the Isa family, Palestinians living in St. Louis, Missouri, came under suspicion for possible terrorist connections.  The US Government placed a bug on their telephone.  Though the Feds were listening for possible terrorist activities, in 1989 they inadvertently found themselves recording sounds of the father and mother engaged in a Muslim “honor killing” of their 16-year-old daughter, Palestina.  The daughter, also a Muslim, had assimilated into America life, taking a job and dating someone of whom the family disapproved.  The family believed it had no alternative but to kill her.

            Was the Aptheker home similarly bugged?  Aptheker was an open and prominent member of the Communist Party.  If the home had been bugged, and if the Feds overheard Herbert and Bettina “playing” their secret game, then the FBI would have been in the position to blackmail Herbert Aptheker.  Bettina’s memoir gives no hint of any FBI bugging or blackmail.   So, either 1) the FBI had not installed such listening devices in their home, or 2) they did, but the molestation did not occur, or 3) it did occur, but the bugs did not detect the “games.”  Barring future discovery of some old Govt. recordings, there seems to be no hard evidence to prove Bettina’s charges.  We have simply her word.

            Yet, reading her autobiography, I reluctantly conclude that Bettina’s “recovered memory” is probably accurate, that Herbert probably did abuse her when she was a child.  I admired Herbert, and in many ways still do.  But I concede that her description of his reaction to her accusation when she finally confronted him, - this has the ring of truth.  Sadly, I now think Herbert probably did what she accuses him of.

            There is another item, a strange insertion in Bettina’s story that raises questions that she did not attempt to answer.  She asserts that her father went to Mexico to “find” a Mexican Communist who had betrayed American Communist leader Gus Hall to authorities, so that Hall would face prison in the US.(23)  Hall had fled from the US after being found guilty on an anti-Communist charge, and in Mexico he had been captured.  If the US Govt. was unaware that prominent Communist Herbert Aptheker was going in and out of Mexico illegally in 1951 at the height of the Cold War, then the Feds probably had no clue as to what was going on in the Aptheker household when Herbert “played train” with Bettina.  This would reinforce the notion that the FBI would have no hard evidence of molestation, even if it had occurred.  It makes her charge more plausible.  Not only does it make the charge of molestation more likely against Herbert, it raises other, even more serious questions about his trip to Mexico.  But again, for both alleged events, we have only her word.

            I noted earlier that Bettina’s leftist ideology distorts her view of reality.  Let me illustrate.  Doing research, Bettina and her mate Kate had visited the Chicago home of Mrs. Duster, the daughter of famed civil rights leader Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  “…Mrs. Duster gave Kate and me very careful instructions about which streets in the neighborhood were safe to walk and which were not.  With this she directed us to the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago…We set off and soon came upon the southern border of the university, which faced the ghetto.  Entrance to the campus from this side was impossible, as it was bordered by a huge wrought-iron gate, with spikes…and a literal moat such as one might expect…at a medieval castle.  I was too stunned even to speak; the racist message…was unbelievable.” (400)

Reading this, I concluded that what was unbelievable was Bettina’s denial of reality.  Mrs. Duster, daughter of a Progressive-era, civil-rights activist, Duster, who herself had been a social worker in Chicago, knew her neighborhood, and how unsafe it was.  Who made it unsafe?  Roaming bands of Ku Kluxers?  No, young Black males.  They were the violent criminals whom Mrs. Duster was directing Bettina to avoid.  They were the Huns of modern Chicago – so dangerous that an outpost of civilization, the city’s university, excavated a moat and installed a heavy gate to impede any invasion of the peaceful campus.  Without the moat there might have been no library to house the papers of Wells-Barnett.  With invasions of violent criminals, would the university have found it necessary to relocate to a safer area?  But Bettina can only see “racism.”  Has she really removed her red-tinted glasses she had inherited from her parents?

            When her parents lived in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Fay was mugged twice, and Herbert was knocked to the ground by a thief who used a knife to cut open his pockets in search for valuables.  Herbert was in denial.  He told me it was all political.  Though one cannot preclude anti-communism as a possible motive, it is far more likely that the mugger had simply targeted a white.  Black racism is rampant, but to the left, which dominates the academedia complex, Black racism does not exist.  Black crime is ignored, or excused.  So the left cannot analyze the reality of big cities.  When I was living in Brooklyn, I resided one subway stop from the Apthekers, and I left the neighborhood after a mugger broke my jaw (which decades later still causes problems).  After their muggings, Fay and Herbert separated themselves from the violent criminals of Brooklyn – not by a moat away, but by a continent away, to California.  Could they even admit to themselves that Black racism and Black crime motivated them to flee their home?  Bettina evaluates the moat as “racist.”  How does she evaluate her parents escape from crime?  Is white flight a symptom of racism?  Or a survival technique – seeking to escape from a hostile environment infected with Black noise, Black aggression, Black bullying, Black crime, Black terror.  (I certainly do not mean that all Blacks do these things, but most vote for the pro-crime politicians that refuse to crack down on illegal activities, resulting in mounting crime in those areas, and crime causes more poverty.)

            Another example of how the leftist ideology distorts Bettina’s view of reality: “I heard white students scapegoating students of color, blaming them if their white friends had not been admitted to university.  I used this as an example, named it as a form of racism.  This lecture brought the white students up short…Only then, I saw, when we were out of denial about how pervasive racism is, could I teach the history and begin a fruitful dialogue.”(461)  In her view, the charge of racism closes debate and brings white students (or Blacks like Louisiana-born Ward Connerly) up short!  Clearly, Bettina did not want dialogue any more than did President Bill Clinton during his “Dialogue on Race.”  What both want is a monologue on race, rationalizing policies that in the name of civil rights and equal opportunity deny civil rights and equal opportunity to white men and others.  (This is not what the civil rights movement stood for when I sat-in at Woolworth’s lunch-counter in the first New Orleans sit-in in 1960.)

            One must wonder about Bettina’s university classes.  She wrote, “Teaching became a form of activism for me,…”(406)  She was helping to create the feminist studies’ curricula, not only for her classes, but for emerging, growing field.  “I created a teaching style that established boundaries of trust and respect…I think this was possible because of the feeling of unconditional love that welled up in me as each class began…Whether or not students agreed with me on any particular subject didn’t matter.  What mattered was offering then a space…to come to their own conclusions.  What mattered was that they learned to love themselves ‘regardless,’…”!? 459)  In a history class, one might (or might not) learn history; sociology class, sociology; engineering class, engineering.  In the feminist class, one learns to love oneself.  Are you kidding me?  Should one receive university credit for learning to love oneself?

            Despite my objections and criticism, I found this to be an enjoyable book.  For brevity I shall mention a few other points.  As a child she bemoaned the execution of the Rosenbergs, the “alleged” atomic spies.(21)  Alleged!  In 2012 Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke thanking the Western atomic scientists who had delivered suit cases of secret files to the old USSR to help the Soviets develop the bomb.  Putin emphasized “suitcases full.”  Bettina whitewashes the Black Panther Party(221).  For a better description of that murderous organization, read Destructive Generation by David Horowitz.  Bettina praises Mario Savio’s commitment to the First Amendment(129) during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, but omits his support of the suppression of free speech at U. C.  Berkeley  years later when the campus paper printed an editorial critical of affirmative action, and the left confiscated and destroyed all copies of the paper.  Free Speech Movement?  But only for the left.

            Some quibbles.  Bettina writes that her dad was homophobic and describes an incident where he insulted a long-haired man at a concert.  Yet, in all my dealings with him, he was usually cordial.  I worked for him for several years and do not recall him uttering a word demeaning to gays.  However, around early 1975 I brought the subject up when I submitted to him a possible introduction to a collection of his articles.  In the introduction I criticized Herbert on several issues, including his silence about gay oppression.  He blew up, shouting at me as never before.  He screamed at me that he was leading the fight inside the Communist Party to change its position to make it more tolerant of gays.  As I was not a member of the Party, I had no way of judging the veracity of his claim – which was made in anger.  In September 2012 I emailed Bettina, our first contact in about four decades.  I asked her about this specifically.  She graciously replied to me, writing that she has uncovered nothing in her research on gays and the CP to substantiate her father’s assertion to me about his efforts to liberalize the CP stance on gays.  When Herbert returned my introduction in 1975 in that heated encounter, he did not fire me on the spot.  Yet, I felt the atmosphere had changed, and began to search for other work.

            Bettina mentions that her grandfather was a major founder of one of the oldest synagogues in Brooklyn (426), but she omits that he acquired a building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and 28^th Street – a building he got around 1928 and lost after the market crash of 1929.  She is good in describing how as an only child, she was like a 3^rd adult in the family.(34)  I had a similar experience as an only child.  She blames the fall of Communist East Germany on corruption; I blame its demise on socialism.  Indeed, without the presence of Soviet troops, it would have fallen long before 1991.

Her autobiography should have had an index, but that is a minor point.

            What is good about her book?  She presents an inside view of the Free Speech Movement protests in California, which would have repercussions by allowing the left to be heard on numerous campuses throughout the nation.  She is good at showing the struggles by a lesbian to conform to her parents’ religion (Communism), and how, in the end, she could no longer live a lie with her husband.  Her lesbian feelings were a major chink in the armor of Communism, one that allowed her to free herself from some of that heavy, rigid ideology.  It was not easy, and she writes of her problems with paranoia, self-loathing, and depression – problems I too have experienced as a gay man.  Once freed from the red armor, she was lucky to find a lesbian partner, Kate, and if they did not live “happily ever after,” at least they lived together happily.  Her chapter on the death of her parents is moving.  The confrontation with her father, Herbert, about the abuse, is wrenching.  Her description of driving on a bridge in California just as an earthquake rumbled beneath her provides a depth absent from the 20 seconds of TV images shown during such natural calamities.

            Her narrative of her conversion to Buddhism is interesting but left me cold.  One tenet of the religion is enough to close my mind on the issue – thou shall not kill insects.  As one who grew up in New Orleans swatting mosquitoes, crunching cockroaches, and using matches to burn ants, I utterly reject the ideal of not killing vermin.  When my Hindu friends gently remove a bug from a table, I roll my eyes.  I, too, wear my own set of blinders.

            As much as I disagree with Bettina’s politics, I enjoyed reliving her era – for it is mine as well.  We fought some of the same battles, yet arrived at different destinations.  Yet, I suspect we are both a bit more tolerant now than we were decades ago.  That she would even answer my emails, knowing that I’m now a conservative, attests to her tolerance.  Overall, Bettina’s book is an honest work about iconic figures of the left; one notes her courage in various movements, her struggles within her immediate family, and her wider family (the Party).  Finally she emerged as a lesbian mother and an academic for feminism and the left.  One need not agree with her to learn from her.  Bettina’s story covers not only the Berkeley protests, but some of the changes in the US, and the flexibility within the American system that contrasts with the rigidity of the Communist Party.  Hers is a volume that tells volumes.

            Addition, 10 March 2015.  Bottom line – Bettina’s autobiography raises two disturbing charges against her father, Herbert Aptheker: 1) Did he molest her?  2) Was he a hit man (not just a philosophical debater) for the Communist movement?  Do Federal Agencies have any tapes or information related to either of these charges?